Hello,

I've been playing guitar for almost four years now and learning where the notes are on the fretboard was something I never really did and now I greatly regret it (same thing goes for chords).

Anywhoo, I was wondering how you guys came to learn where the notes are located? I've tried memorizing a picture of a fretboard with all of the note values on it but it's not really working =/

Any pointers you guys can lend me?

Thanks!

i use octaves : c i only know the notes on the first/last string from there i go automat' to the oct on the string below blahblahblah and the history repeats itself

Yeah, octaves are a nice place to start with. Just learn the octave pattern.

Next, go string by string. Learn the 5th fret to begin with, it'll keep you starting from the open string, then get familiar with some other frets. Repeat this for the other strings.

10 min of this / day and you'll be set!

Hey man,

As MonkeyDAthos said use octaves. If you look carefully to the fretboard you will see that there are some shortcuts.
For example; Take the note on the first fret of the low E string. It is a F. If you move +7 frets on the higher string
(A string) which is 8th fret of the A string, you will get another F.(1+7=8th fret) If you move +2 frets on the 2 higher
string (D string) which is 3rd fret of the D string you will get another F.(1+2=3th fret)

Then you will notice there are some rules which are;

- +7 frets on the first higher string
- +2 frets on the second higher string (You can get this by the 5 fret rule between the strings also)

And since the last string is another E the notes are same as the low E. Also this same structure repeats itself after the
12th fret by +12 rule (Meaning 1st fret Low E string = (1+12)13th fret Low E string)

I'm also adding a picture for you to see what i said



Hope that helps.

Dogukan,

PS: Sorry for english. I think i did some mistakes as i wrote

Quadrium and dark dude are right, using octaves is a good way to begin to memorize the notes on the fretboard. Also do you play scales much? Knowing your scales (pentatonics, chromatic, and diatonics) can really help in learning the notes on the fretboard

I've got a book by Satriani called "Guitar Secrets". One of the exercises in it that he says he used a lot early on was called "Finding the Notes". You pick a note. Say "F#" and then with each click of a metronome find it everywhere on the fretboard on all six strings. Remember that each string has a note in at least two places, and then there are the natural harmonics. Repeat for all 12 notes.

Mate,

another idea which I used a lot and I still use is to play chords in all their forms (containing 3 notes, 4 notes, 5 notes, 6 notes) and then play around with their voicings.

I would always analyze the chord structure and figure out where the tonic, third, fifth are. Then I would go for the other notes (the 7th, 9th, 13th, etc.) You can sing the notes so that you can also remember their sound relative to the tonic.

It's one of the many ways you can do it! You can also start memorizing where the octaves are like the guys said and in relative to those, try to figure out the thirds and the fifths of a given tonic, whose octaves you have already figured out.

We can talk a lot around this subject if you want hope this helps

Cosmin

Thanks for all the information and suggestions, guys!

Will definately set aside a good amount of time from my practice schedule to work on this.